Finally, as a sort of retrospective, this from David Poynter, four years later. (I was again in Britain.)
July 30, 2007
Well, David, another excursion to your homeland. I am going to get a map of the British Isles (or so I tell myself) and mark my various journeys since 1970. I’ve seen some of it now. Any comments on this trip?
Well, you did make it up as you went along, didn’t you, just as I said you would? Yet the outline was there all along, not needing to be worried over.
True enough.
You connected more with people on this trip that you remember. Not only Robert and his friends – though all that went very well – but many casual contacts and kindnesses.
I was not inhibited by ideas of their being different.
You were, on previous trips, to a degree you don’t seem to quite remember.
I had good contacts in 2003.
In 2003, though you were nearly apologetic about being an American.
Because of the war.
Well, because of the war, but because of you. You weren’t well and did not suspect it.
I don’t see the connection.
You were one thing and thought you were something else. Physically, mentally, spiritually. The incongruity between reality and idea left you somewhat off your feet.
As Hemingway was saying –
As you were saying to him. Pretense comes in many forms, and mostly in different levels of seriousness and awareness. It is less harmful perhaps to pretend actively than to pretend to oneself and not quite let oneself know it.
Hmm. Well it is true I have felt very much myself here. Wandering on my own, tramping with my pack on my back and another being carried over my neck or in one hand – walking seemingly endlessly and pretty tirelessly – feeling comfortable being silent and comfortable chatting.
One difference between Hemingway and you, or van der Post and you, is that you imagined yourself into your future by following a lead from another part of yourself, not from a conscious plan, or from any form of manipulation. Therefore you needn’t wait uneasily for possible exposures of posturings. Your fears would be exposure of who you are inside; there are few external surprises that would interest anyone.
But here I am at 61 – as at every year for half a century, nearly – asking when I am going to write what I want to have written. At 61, one is hardly justified in expecting to inaugurate a new career. The world belongs to the young. Hemingway was in his twenties still when his first book was published – and more to the point he worked all the time he was supposed to work.
If you want to write, write. How many times have you been told that? But you aren’t necessarily here to write, either way. The work you are doing is not meaningless. Now – do that work when you return home. Set it out without notes, just write. The only planning you need to do concerns what you want to say. In other words, set out your topics one by one and set out to write them. After you do what your friend Michael calls a brain dump, then is the time for looking at documents, notes, incidents, etc. to fill-in or buttress.
I can see it in principle, and how many times have I laid out a list of things to write. But at home I dry up.
It isn’t harder to depend upon inspiration for topics than for words. You set out to write about healing and you did that. You set out to write about guidance and you did not do that, at least not yet. Another topic surely is how to contact the other side, which has a whole list of sub topics:
- The structure of minds in the afterlife
- The need for physical cooperation with the other side
- Integration of layers of yourself
- Connections with others as a means of creating structure
- Difficulties and perplexities of the process and of the questions of meaning
All that would be plenty to be getting on with.
Yes it would. Perhaps I can do it.
You can do it. The question is whether you will do it.